Five men and four women, including the top runners on both teams, return from the squads that ran at the NAIA Nationals last November in Vancouver, Wash.

The men finished fourth that day, a performance that could have been even better with a healthier top seven.

The LCSC women placed 11th, a pleasant surprise to longtime coach Mike Collins.

“I wasn’t dumbfounded by it, but I would have thought a 14th-place finish would have been good for us,” Collins said. “The team ran very, very well.”

Buoyed by a bevy of returning talent and some new blood on both sides, there is talk of dueling national titles in Lewiston.

“Based on our performances last year, I think we should be excited,” Collins said. “That’s not just with me, but I think my athletes are more excited than I’ve seen in the past. I’m getting repeated e-mails, Facebook messages about how their training is going during the summer, are we getting people in and how they can help us. So the buy-in that way has been great from a team concept standpoint.”

The men finished fourth at nationals behind champion Oklahoma Christian despite having top three runners—Sam Atkin, Dave Marks and Jimmy Oribo—limited by injuries and place outside the top 20.

“It was a very gratifying feeling to finish as high as we did without having any All-Americans,” Collins said.

Fast-forward to 2012.

Marks is recovered from the broken heel that sidelined him for three-quarters of the 2011 regular season. Atkin and Oribo are healthy and raring to go. Hayden Randall, a junior from Eugene, Ore. and Andy Keim, a senior from Havre, Mont. are set to step in behind that top three.

And Irish import Pauric McLaughlin and freshman Dylan Crevelt (Cascade HS) are ready to push for time in the starting seven.

“The core group is back, and the new guys are filling in real well,” Collins said. “We have possibilities of doing some very special things this year.”

The same can be said of the LCSC women, who return their top three runners from 2011 in seniors Chelsey Leighton and Amanda Palmer and sophomore Sophie Bush.

Collins said Leighton ran her best race of last season at the perfect time, outdueling Frontier Conference champion Rhianna Grossman of Carroll to finish 23rd overall at nationals.

Bush, Palmer and senior Whitlee Young are also in the mix to contribute in the starting seven, but the linchpin of just how successful the Warriors are in 2012 could be senior Kelsey Klettke.

Klettke was an All-American as a sophomore in 2010, but was felled by a lower-body injury that Collins and the training staff couldn’t totally identify.

“She could have gritted her teeth and run at nationals, but I didn’t feel comfortable with it knowing that we’d have her back for this year,” Collins said.

Klettke took most of the summer off, and is ready to resume her career. With her in the mix, the Warriors are aiming at improving on that 11th place national finish.

“It would be nice to see us step back into that top 10,” Collins said. “Everyone’s going to have to contribute for us to do that.”

The Willamette Invite on Sept. 29 in Salem, Ore. is a highlight of the team’s 2012 schedule, with a fast course and high-profile competition usually producing personal-best times all around. The Warriors host the Inland Empire Championships on Oct. 13, and will welcome teams from Washington State, Idaho and other Division I programs.

“It’ll be good for us to see how we stack up against the ‘big brothers’,” Collins said.